


by any other name

by WingsOfTime



Series: roza [3]
Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, just a silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 14:33:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17489792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingsOfTime/pseuds/WingsOfTime
Summary: The Commander gives Taimi a present. He... grew it himself.





	by any other name

**Author's Note:**

> this would probably work best in comic format, but i didn't want to draw it hhh

“Taimi,” Roza says.

Taimi looks up—not as much as she used to before she came down to Elona, which is _still_ strange—to see him smiling mildly at her. She glances around furtively, but none of his gross dead things are trailing him. Good; he’s finally learned _that_ lesson.

“What can I do for you, Poobah?” Taimi goes back to clicking away at her keyboard.

“Ah…” Roza grunts lightly as he dips his head. “I noticed you don’t have your ribbon anymore, so I thought I’d give you something else to put in your hair. You know, just in case you feel like having something pretty amongst all of this doom and gloom.”

Taimi glances back at him curiously, a half-formed excuse already on the tip of her tongue, but her voice dies when she sees what he’s doing. He’s reaching into—his _head?_ Is that his head?! No, she realizes after a horrifying second, just the crown of his… branch hair. Plant people: still weird.

He pulls out a delicate, ghostly rose, petals touched with a familiar, Commander-y shade of lavender. Then he holds it out to her expectantly.

“Uh,” says Taimi.

Roza waits. He’s still smiling.

Taimi takes it slowly. The bottom of the flower seems to be fashioned into some of clip, she realizes with the only part of her brain that isn’t freaking out. She tentatively touches a petal; it glows lavender. She tries not to think about the fact that its colouration seems to be the exact same as Roza’s, and fails.

“Thanks… Commander,” she says as gracefully as she can manage. “I’ve always wanted to carry around a… part of your body.”

Roza’s smile grows. “Homegrown _is_ the highest quality,” he agrees. It’s dark out, and he’s pulsing with soft purple light—Taimi pointedly _does not notice_ that the rose is doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. Nor does she notice that she can… feel it do so. Ew ew _ew_.

Roza pats her on the head, apparently satisfied, before walking away. Taimi feels something from the rose wrap around her finger, and tries not to hurl it to the ground with a scream.

~*~

“Where did you get this?” Canach holds it up curiously, poking at the petals. “You know, it almost looks like…”

“If you’re about to say ‘our illustrious Commander,’ then yep! Roza gave it to me. From his… head.” Taimi shudders. _Still_ weird.

“Not for the pun, I imagine,” Canach muses. “Unfortunate. I thought for a second that the Commander had developed a sense of humour.”

He puts it in her hair, and Taimi can _feel_ it cling onto her. “Alchemy help me,” she mutters, fighting the urge to immediately take it out.

“He’s never given _me_ anything,” Canach says.

“Is it still… a part of him, though? Can he,” Taimi winces, “… feel it?”

“Well it’s not a part of him _anymore_ ,” Canach points out in a tone that implies that the very existence of such a question offends him. “He took it _off_.”

The rose glows. Canach makes a pleasantly surprised noise. “Hey! It didn’t do that when I was touching it.”

“ _Aughegh_ ,” says Taimi.

~*~

“Are you…” Roza’s voice is soft with disbelief, “ _Dissecting_ the flower I gave you?!”

Gorrik, next to Taimi, turns around and adjusts his glasses. “Well,” he says, “Natural plants grown from sylvari are very rare, you know. You’ve only existed for thirty-one years, and there are still a lot of things we haven’t had the opportunity to research! The implications something like _this_ could have for anthro-horticulture are incredible! How did you—”

“Sorry, Commander,” Taimi interrupts, only feeling a _little_ bit guilty at the look on his face. “I was probably… not going to wear it, if it makes you feel any better. And hey! Science!”

She waves her hands about. Roza stares at her.

“ _Asura_ ,” he says with feeling.

“Commander!” a prickly voice announces from absolutely nowhere, “Are you just giving people flowers now? Can I have one? I want mine to glow pink.”

Roza looks as if he’s going to have an aneurism. “Pink,” he repeats nonsensically.

Taimi knows _that_ tone. “The dissection was Gorrik’s idea!” she sing-songs, then grabs her teleporter.

~*~


End file.
